Wallflower at the Web Party — JONATHAN ABRAMS was in a spot. He could take the safe bet and accept the $30 million that Google was offering him for Friendster, the social networking Web start-up he began only a year earlier, in 2002. Saying yes to Google would provide a quick …

Edelman and the one-sided conversation — The first inkling I had that Edelman PR had stumbled again in its social media efforts on behalf of client WalMart came early yesterday when Laurel English emailed me a copy of the MediaPost story. Shortly after that, Donna Simmons …

Edelman, Wal-Mart and the Loss of Control in Media — It's inevitable that a PR firm like Edelman would create a phony blog for one of its clients (in this case Wal-Mart — see Shel Holtz for a great analysis). For all of the hype over "conversation" as the new media paradigm …

Blog integrity is important — If you don't disclose you're being paid to blog, you're gonna create a mess, like Edelman and Walmart did. That's why I don't like PayPerPost (which sponsored part of the conference yesterday). I don't mind PayPerPost on the face of it.

'Good for the Soul' — With iPod's fifth birthday around the corner, Steve Jobs discusses the MP3 player's design, the cool factor and the impact on how we listen to music. — Paul Sakuma / AP — Holistic: Jobs at an Apple media event last month — Oct. 23 marks the fifth anniversary of Apple's iPod.

Me and My Mylo — After initially dismissing the Mylo from Sony as something half baked, I decided that I really can't judge a book by its cover so I decided to plunk down the $350 at the Sony Style Store in Las Vegas this weekend and take a gamble on it. — My first impressions are …

Paid popularity — Inspired by the success of blogging journalist and former staffer Om Malik, Business 2.0 is paying staffers to blog, rewarding them on the basis of traffic. My newfound friend Dan Shanoff objects at HuffingtonPost, arguing, with merit, that this may cause writers to …

Who Should Buy Yahoo! — I got this comment on my Buying YHOO post last week: … My first thought was that I had sold too soon. My second thought was "no, not a carrier". And the next thing I did was send the comment around to some of my friends who are active in the market.

iPod Killers for Christmas 2006 — We have run the iPod Killers for Christmas/Summer series since 2004. In that time we reported on 149 portable players and NOT one iPod killer from the bunch. That said, we may actually have a couple of genuine challengers to Apple.

Blogs, Papers and Irony — Nick Carr and Dave Winer are arguing about something having to do with bloggers, Iraq and murdered journalists. — I think blogs are important ways to distribute certain kinds of information, but they are not even close to being a substitute for traditional media for certain news topics.

AT&T: Waiting for the FCC's Call — The biggest U.S. phone company may need to make hefty concessions to win approval for the BellSouth takeover. So, what's on the table? — If only the feds had waited a day. It was Oct. 11, one day before the Federal Communications Commission was set …

Planet Google Wants You — AS Dan Firger, a law student at New York University, strolls from class to class during the course of his day or pauses for a breather in Washington Square Park, his cellphone is routinely buzzing inside his messenger bag. He can often guess who it is: Google.

PlayStation 3 Wins Kudos At DigitalLife 06 — DigitalLife, the "ultimate consumer technology, gaming & entertainment event of the year", has announced this year's "best of show" awards, with Sony netting the ultimate award for their PlayStation 3, as well as Best Booth.

Is Windows Near End of Its Run? — Steven A. Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft, has his hands full. The next version of the Windows operating system, Vista, is finally about to arrive — years late and clouded by doubts that it might violate antitrust rules in Europe.

KDE Celebrates 10 Years of the Free Desktop — Yesterday at 10:00 AM the president of the KDE e.V. Eva Brucherseifer welcomed the audience of the presentation track at the KDE anniversary event at the Technische Akademie Esslingen (TAE) in Ostfildern near Stuttgart, Germany.

'Second Life' to begin selling real names — For anyone who has used the virtual world "Second Life," the last names Gjellerup, Godel or Stapovic probably mean a lot more than their real last names. — That's because historically, "Second Life" users have had to choose names from an ever-changing …